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Earth Science

Earth Is Getting Darker, Literally, and Scientists Are Trying To Find Out Why (404media.co) 58

Posted by msmash from the stranger-things dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: It's not the vibes; Earth is literally getting darker. Scientists have discovered that our planet has been reflecting less light in both hemispheres, with a more pronounced darkening in the Northern hemisphere, according to a study published on Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The new trend upends longstanding symmetry in the surface albedo, or reflectivity, of the Northern and Southern hemispheres. In other words, clouds circulate in a way that equalizes hemispheric differences, such as the uneven distribution of land, so that the albedos roughly match -- though nobody knows why. "There are all kinds of things that people have noticed in observations and simulations that tend to suggest that you have this hemispheric symmetry as a kind of fundamental property of the climate system, but nobody's really come up with a theoretical framework or explanation for it," said Norman Loeb, a physical scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center, who led the new study. "It's always been something that we've observed, but we haven't really explained it fully."

To study this mystery, Loeb and his colleagues analyzed 24 years of observations captured since 2000 by the Clouds and the Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES), a network of instruments placed on several NOAA and NASA satellites. Instead of an explanation for the strange symmetry, the results revealed an emerging asymmetry in hemispheric albedo; though both hemispheres are darkening, the Northern hemisphere shows more pronounced changes which challenges "the hypothesis that hemispheric symmetry in albedo is a fundamental property of Earth," according to the study.
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Earth Is Getting Darker, Literally, and Scientists Are Trying To Find Out Why More

Earth Is Getting Darker, Literally, and Scientists Are Trying To Find Out Why

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  • So Bender was right, it was really bright in the past?
    • there was less roadways, parking lots, solar fields, and concrete buildings. If you want it to be just as bright, paint everything beige or green. Or, just dump millions of gallons of white paint into the ocean. /sarcasm
    • Yes, in fact 13.8 billion years ago you would not believe how bright it was.

  • Earth Is Getting Darker, Literally, and Scientists Are Trying To Find Out Why

    We're either in the Darkest Timeline [fandom.com] or the DC Universe [wikipedia.org]. Not sure which would be worse. (Washington D.C. maybe in both at the moment.)

  • TLDR (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 02, 2025 @01:31PM (#65698878)

    Earth is reflecting slightly less sunlight than before, about a fraction of a percent per decade, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere. This is due to melting ice, fewer pollution aerosols that normally help form reflective clouds, and big events like wildfires or volcanoes. You cannot see the change with your eyes, but the extra absorbed energy is enough to affect climate and warming.

  • photons (Score:3)

    by bugs2squash ( 1132591 ) on Thursday October 02, 2025 @01:39PM (#65698914)
    It's the solar panels vacuuming up all the photons to turn into crypto

  • Why is it getting darker? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Because the air is thicker with more pollution.

  • Random Chance (Score:3)

    by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Thursday October 02, 2025 @02:47PM (#65699132) Journal

    clouds circulate in a way that equalizes hemispheric differences, such as the uneven distribution of land, so that the albedos roughly match -- though nobody knows why.

    Have they considered random chance? We know that today's arrangements of continents and ocean currents is just the result of random plate tectonics over the last 4.5 billion years so why would we expect that there is a reason other than random chance? The moon happens to be almost the exact same angular size as the sun which is why we get such spectacular solar eclipses but there are no astronomers wondering why the two are the same angular size - it is just random chance.

    Unless there is evidence that the two hemispheres have always had the same albedo over the last few billion years i.e. over a period where the arrangement of continents and ocean currents have varied widely, then there is no reason to suspect anything but random chance.

    • clouds circulate in a way that equalizes hemispheric differences, such as the uneven distribution of land, so that the albedos roughly match -- though nobody knows why.

      Have they considered random chance? We know that today's arrangements of continents and ocean currents is just the result of random plate tectonics over the last 4.5 billion years so why would we expect that there is a reason other than random chance? The moon happens to be almost the exact same angular size as the sun which is why we get such spectacular solar eclipses but there are no astronomers wondering why the two are the same angular size - it is just random chance.

      Unless there is evidence that the two hemispheres have always had the same albedo over the last few billion years i.e. over a period where the arrangement of continents and ocean currents have varied widely, then there is no reason to suspect anything but random chance.

      Next you'll be saying the anthropic principle is true!

  • I'm no scientist but... (Score:3)

    by Faw ( 33935 ) on Thursday October 02, 2025 @03:23PM (#65699238)

    I don't know, ice caps are melting, less white area, less light reflected?

  • Higher CO2 content in atmosphere -> more plant growth -> more deep green viewed from above = "darker"

    That's just a place to look. We'll figure it out; it's certainly not some grand cosmic magic.

  • There's nothing that can convince me this isn't the start of the discovery of astrophage.

  • "Toldja DEI would turn the world into a shithole, Trump always right. It was nice and white for a reason! God wanted it that way, he told me while I hit a hole-in-one from a million yards, true story, everyone saw it! Then the radical woke left made Santa and Areola the Mermaid black, so sad, they ruin everything, including my digestive system, can't eat KFC anymore said my doctor, the world has gone to Hell, lots of Hell, so we have to work harder to repair it like Columbus did to the Mayflower, rescuing t

  • It is common knowledge that the planets Albedo (Level of light reflection) has been dropping. The mean reasons are less snow and ice (a large portion of Albedo loss) and fever overall clouds. It's one of the runaway cascading effects of man-made global warming. This really isn't news anymore. Well, perhaps for some, I guess. ... Errrm, nevermind, carry on.

  • I knew it! This is why TV shows and movies are so dark you can't see what's happening, isn't it? Time to move production to the southern hemisphere, I guess.

  • ...when solar energy first started to be a Thing I wondered if it might have some small effect of *increasing* global warming by reducing the Earth's albedo. Energy that would have been reflected back into space is now captured and converted to electricity (+ some heat) and the electricity itself is eventually (mostly) converted to heat.

    The northern hemisphere contains a higher percentage of technologically advanced countries, thus probably has more solar energy capture.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Skapare ( 16644 )

      Too many homes let the heat out and just pay for more to keep it warm ana cozy all winter. And, or course, some of that power comes from solar panels that take light in and reflect almost none of it back out to space.

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